The ringleader of the gang alleged to have kidnapped the British boy Sahil Saeed last month has been killed in a shoot-out with Pakistani police.

Sahil, five, from Oldham, was held for 13 days after being snatched while on a trip with his father to visit relatives in Jhelum, in Pakistan's Punjab province.

An armed gang broke into his grandmother's home on the night before they were to return to the UK, abducting Sahil after ransacking the house for six hours. Sahil was later released unharmed after a ransom was paid in Paris.

Police later caught members of the gang, parading two of them before the press with much fanfare last month. However the gang's leader, identified as Safir, was sprung from a police van yesterday by two armed accomplices as he was being moved from Jhelum to a police station in the neighbouring Gujrat district, where he is wanted for questioning about a series of murders in his home village.

Police chased the trio for five miles before surrounding them. "We engaged these people in crossfire, which carried on for about an hour," said district police chief, Tariq Abbas Qureshi. All three were killed in the shooting, he said.

It had emerged that the gang suspected of taking Sahil were criminals implicated in at least 22 murders.

Last month three people were arrested in Spain in connection with Sahil's kidnapping. The two Pakistani men and a Romanian woman are alleged to have taken a £110,000 ransom payment from Sahil's father, Raja Naqqash. Police waited for the ransom money to be paid and for Sahil to be released before making the arrests and detaining the suspected gang members in Pakistan.